Limpopo flood victim’s body found

File photo: A woman, carrying a baby, wades through the water covering the street and bridge connecting the suburbs in the outskirts of Chokwe near the Limpopo river.

Polokwane - The body of a 57-year-old man swept away during floods in Limpopo earlier in the week was discovered on Thursday.

Thomas Rampepe went missing in Ha-Kutama, Makhado, on Tuesday after he tried to cross a flooded river while searching for his livestock, Tshilwavhusiku police spokesman Constable Munyadziwa Thenga said.

“We received a report that the community members, who were also searching side-by-side with police, found his body in the river.”

At least 10 people had died in the Limpopo floods in the past week. Three were still missing. Hundreds of people were left homeless.

In Musina, rescue teams were searching for the bodies of two children who went missing on Sunday evening, after their car was washed away when a bridge collapsed. Their father’s body was found partly buried under an uprooted Mopani tree on a nearby farm.

Rescuers were searching for a villager from Shawela, near Malamulele, swept away while crossing a river.

Several districts in the north of Limpopo were still cut off from the outside world. Air force and emergency service helicopters were being used to rescue people from some settlements.

At least 95 people had been rescued from the Kruger National Park. Limpopo emergency services had rescued more than 300 people from flooded areas since Tuesday.

Beeld reported on Thursday that about 15 000 crocodiles escaped from the Rakwena Crocodile Farm into the Limpopo River during the flooding.

A few thousand of them were recaptured in the dense bush next to the river and in adjacent orange groves, Zane Langman, the son-in-law of Johan Boshoff, who owns Rakwena, told Beeld.